Bulls 115, Bobcats 76: Blogcat's Take

One night after shocking the Utah Jazz, the Bobcats looked to make it two in a row in Chicago and, well…hey, how about that Jazz victory, huh? That was really something, wasn’t it? Too bad I can’t just write a follow-up on it.

It was sort of close after the first quarter, with the Bulls up 24-19. But when the game finally ended, you could pretty much sum things up by saying that during the last 36 minutes, the Bulls went on a 91-57 run. This was the kind of blowout where midway through the third quarter, commentators Matt and Adrian quit bothering to even cover the game and just went into sports talk show mode, discussing news and notes from around the NBA—they ought to start taking callers when this happens. I stuck around just to make sure no one rolled an ankle or started a fist fight.

I’m sure John Hollinger at ESPN.com could point out a number of Efficiency Ranking categories in which we underperformed, but that would be entirely unnecessary; it’d be like trying to offer a literary criticism of a song by the Ying Yang Twins. How about keeping it simple: 4 points on 1/12 shooting to start the second quarter, for starters. Or the field goal percentages: Raymond Felton went 4/15, Gerald Wallace went 3/9, Emeka Okafor went 3/9 (although on the positive side, all the team’s misses helped him to 12 rebounds), Adam Morrison went 3/13, Derek Anderson went 2/7…These are some horrible fractions, people. Melvin Ely, who hasn’t really been doing anything all year other than sitting on the bench and growing facial hair, was actually our leading scorer. And forget trying to match up with Kirk Hinrich, Felton got outplayed by Thabo Sefolosha. Here’s my favorite one: twice we had players get called for traveling because they caught their own airballs.

One important side note: I don't know if you can download this sort of thing on YouTube.com, but if you can, check out a brilliant comedic performance by Coach Bickerstaff. With about two minutes to go in the third quarter, the Bulls' Luol Deng started to lose control of the ball near our bench, and Coach did the ol' kick-it-from-out-of-bounds-while-pretending-not-to-see-it maneuver, hoping they'd call Deng for the turnover. Then he just kept walking casually and shouting encouragement to the team, hoping nobody saw what he'd just done, like he'd just shoplifted a magazine at an airport newsstand. And when the refs blew the whistle on him and called him for a delay of game, he went into a truly hilarious shock-and-outrage act--it was AWESOME!! You're the best, Coach!! I was out of commission for about the next ten minutes because I was laughing so hard.

Anyway, the Bulls got superior performances out of Ben Gordon and Andres Nocioni to break it open. Gordon, the former UConn star, blew us away with 18 points in the second quarter. Nocioni, the former Argentinian leftist guerilla freedom fighter,* had 19 points and 11 rebounds. These guys played about a half and then they bought in the subs, who also kicked our ass.** It’s hard to believe that rookie Tyrus Thomas (14 points, 4 rebounds, 1 blocked shot, 1 steal) is only averaging 10.5 minutes a game with this team—hey, Chicago, we’ll take him if you don’t want him.

Most of all, we need a guard to replace Brevin Knight, who’s now out for...3 weeks?? What did he do to his groin, anyway, jump on a bicycle with the seat missing? We’re going to regret not trading BK in the off-season, because Derek Anderson is substituting for him about as well as Weinke is for the Panthers. And who’s going to take Knight now? He’s got such chronic problems, he’s not worth the hassle—his groin is the new Jackie Christie.

*I just made that up **Good thing the mascots didn’t square off—probably would’ve been a beatdown there too